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Sundance: 'Sing Street' Star Signs With WME (Exclusive)

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo plays the teen at the center of John Carney’s musical period drama.

WME has snapped up the young star of John Carney’s Sing Street, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.

Making his feature debut, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo stars as a 14-year-old who starts a band to impress a girl (Lucy Boynton) in the 1980s Dublin-set film, which had its world premiere at Sundance on Sunday. The Weinstein Co. already purchased the movie’s U.S. rights from WME Global for an estimated $3 million during Cannes last year; TWC also distributed Carney’s previous film, the Mark Ruffalo-Keira Knightley musical drama Begin Again.

Carney (also repped by WME) has a good track record at Sundance. His breakthrough, the sweet Irish musical romance Once, won the festival’s Audience Award in 2007 on the way to earning Best Original Song at the Academy Awards a year later.

Transformers: Age of Extinction’s Jack Reynor, Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen and Orphan Black’s Maria Doyle Kennedy co-star as Walsh-Peelo’s family in Sing Street, which screens again tonight, as well as Thursday and Saturday evenings.